


Persuade

by sensitivebore



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-14
Updated: 2013-02-14
Packaged: 2017-11-29 06:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensitivebore/pseuds/sensitivebore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carson and Isobel, and persuasion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persuade

The first time it happens, he's sorry. He's sorry and ashamed and repulsed by his weakness, horrified by how he has strayed over the lines, how he has violated the impenetrable upstairs downstairs our stairs their stairs. She tries to reassure him, tell him that it doesn't matter, that she doesn't pay attention to such nonsense. Tries to tell him that it all means nothing to her. He barks a dry laugh, apologizes again, withdraws into coldness. She shrugs, drops the hand from his shoulder. Pulls her dressing gown around her body and tells him to see himself out.

The second time, he's less sorry. He's less sorry because he notices this time, notices that her eyes go far away and that her groans and whimpers are preoccupied, they are existing in some other time and space. Her dead husband, some long-gone lover, he doesn't know. Just knows that it makes him feel less guilty about her. If she's using him that way then he doesn't feel quite so horrid about putting his hand over her mouth, stifling her words; doesn't feel so bad about keeping the bedroom pitch black so he can pretend the hair is chocolate-colored and wavy instead of straight and dark blonde.

His hands can be convinced, if he tries hard enough, if she doesn't speak, if there's no light, that the breasts are larger, the thighs heavier.

His mouth can be persuaded, if she doesn't drink champagne but instead has wine, that the lips are a bit dryer from lack of expensive balm, a bit rougher from being bitten and worried with milk-white teeth.

After the second time, the third, he asked her to change her silken, expensive sheets for plain cotton, for something utilitarian on those nights he shows up at her door, worse for drink but not too worse. A half-bottle of wine, at the most. Three-quarters every now and then.

It's ugly, this thing between them, and he has no illusions otherwise. It's ugly and needful and the worst type of usage that two people can inflict on each other. They don't speak when she comes to the big house for dinners, for parties. He serves her impersonally, silently, the way he serves the others. She occasionally makes a little remark that can be interpreted as innocent joshing, but he knows how cutting she intends it to be.

Isobel dislikes him, to be fair. Dislikes his heavy-handed authoritarian postures and his relentless grip on the old way of doing things; she has told him as much. Has told him this coldly, matter-of-fact as she sits in her armchair drawing off her silk stockings, unclipping them from her garters.

Sometimes he thinks he catches the scent of lemons and vanilla in her bedroom, but that isn't right. Her perfume is expensive and heavy, not light and fresh. Perhaps it's something on the sheets, in the drapes, he doesn't know. He's just glad of it, because it's another thing to help him pretend. To help him close his eyes as he's thrusting into her, as she's rocking beneath him, to close his eyes and dream.

Afterwards, always, he goes home. Back home to the big house, back home to his room where he washes, changes his shirt, his underclothes. Can't get the smell of her off of him soon enough, can't wash away the flowered perfume and the fragrant powder and all of the privilege with rough enough hands. He cleans himself of her.

Goes downstairs, and there Elsie is smiling at him, sitting in his office with her book, waiting for him to come and pour their wine. Smiling with those eyes and the soft plain skin that smells only of good things, natural things, honest things. He sits with her and he never once touches her, never once is improper toward her, because he has had the other, has lain with that horrible woman in her expensive bed and relieved the baser urges, poured all of that violent frustrated want into a willing and eager receptacle.

But here, now, with her, with the one he loves and has loved for years, with the lovely body he'll never touch and the beautiful naked mouth he'll never kiss and the small capable hands he'll never hold, he's whole again.

 


End file.
